Yeah they’re not perfect but like the biggest mistake they made was not getting me diagnosed for autism as a kid, and that’s not really something i blame them for since it’s really a societal problem and you can’t feasibly handle something you’ve heard about in passing twice in your entire life…
Like it’s not rocket science, treat your kids like actual human beings and you’re a good way toward being a good parent.
It’s weird, I think my parents did a fine job of raising me and my brother, even though my father was a raging (but functioning) alcoholic and my mother was (is) manic-depressive. They made sure we were taken care of, put us both through expensive college, and have always been there for us whenever we needed anything. But my brother decided long ago (thanks to therapy) that our upbringing was somehow traumatic and he harbors enormous anger and resentment towards our parents (although he keeps this mostly hidden from them). He has consciously chosen to raise his own children basically the opposite of how our parents did, but they have basically turned out exactly like him: socially awkward, depressed and in terrible physical shape. I asked him whether he blames himself for their problems since he blames our parents for his, and it turns out no, he blames our parents for his children’s problems, too.
Everyone has problems. And everyone thinks they are above them and have moved past them. I think it’s more realistic to just love your kids and hope that you do just a little bit better than your parents did. Just like every generation is smarter than the last maybe in time the planet will be less fucked up.
You know your situation better than anyone so feel free to ignore this if I’m way off base.
But I’m guessing two things here:
Your parents were able to provide you with things you needed as a child. Perhaps things like college and clothes on your back were the things you needed to grow into a fulfilled and happy person. But maybe your brother needed your mom to control her emotions better during an episode. Maybe he needed your dad to be predictable and consistent when he was instead drinking behaving in ways that were irritating or unpredictable from a child’s perspective.
You might not be fully acknowledging some of the things they did (or didn’t do) that made you feel bad when you were little. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse for it to have an impact on you. We know now that children form attachment styles at least partially based on how their parents responded to their cries during infancy. Kids can be amazingly resilient, but also incredibly delicate.
Also, the odds that they treated you differently based on birth order, their age when they had each of you, gender, your personalities, etc. is very high.
You should ask your brother what really bothers him deep down. I’ll bet you get some tears and probably some very deep, very impactful memories/feelings about your parents.
If you asked my younger, more relaxed brother about our parents, he would say, “Yeah man dad’s a dick for drinking and bailing on us, and mom likes to guilt trip us but oh well.”
I would be the one to explain how their constant fighting, dad’s drinking/drugging, mom’s emotional manipulation and authoritarian parenting, etc. made me feel deeply unsafe and insecure as a child. I felt bad about myself and my life. I wished I could get a letter from Hogwarts more than anything. And when our father got so into drugs that he became absent completely, I felt lonely and abandoned. Took me many years to make peace with it and realize he was really sick and struggling.
The thing is, I suspect that I’ve actually come a lot further in my healing than my brother has. I don’t think he’s aware of some of the things he does or why he does them. Any chance your brother is actually onto something here?
Yeah, what you say is pretty reasonable. I just know from talking to my brother that he has sort of invented many of the negative things that happened to him in our house growing up. He has a tendency to describe things that actually happened but then to impart motives or thoughts in our parents’ heads and to be angry about these rather than the events - when of course he can’t really know their motives or thoughts.
One example: our father was a professor and when my brother was in graduate school he was giving a lecture and our dad came to watch him. My brother feels that he was there because he was worried that my brother would do a bad job and embarrass him - when in fact my father has never done or said anything to suggest that he would think in that way. I know from talking to my father that he is just straight up very proud that my brother has gone on to be a professor like him.
You’d be surprised how many parents struggle with even basic stuff like “don’t scream at your child all of the time”. It should be easy and common sense, and yet so many fail at this…
man i don’t even understand why they do that, it very obviously doesn’t work and means that when you actually need to shout at the child they’ll ignore it since you always shout at them
oftentimes it’s straight up more effective (though maybe not quite the correct option) to simply ignore them, which i would think is easier than screaming, but what do i know
I think there’s a lot of people that never got to the point of examining whether their emotional impulses are at all effective at driving them towards their immediate goals, let alone their long term ones. And they don’t realize that things don’t just go back to normal after they bully someone into going along with their way.
My parents were top notch but I was a fucking monster and made their lives hell, and I would not have blamed them for beating the fuck out of me.
I too could have used a 'sperg diagnosis, and they probably could have fostered my civil engineering and architectual design traits better, or given me more books on the subject. From as early as I can remember, I was designing and building detailed models of cities from whatever I could get my hands on. Sand, twigs, blocks of wood from dads carpentry business, cotton thread from mums sewing kit for powerlines, etc. I feel like that was a missed opportunity, now that I work in tech. But at least I have Factorio to scratch that itch.
am i the only one who had pretty good parents?
Yeah they’re not perfect but like the biggest mistake they made was not getting me diagnosed for autism as a kid, and that’s not really something i blame them for since it’s really a societal problem and you can’t feasibly handle something you’ve heard about in passing twice in your entire life…
Like it’s not rocket science, treat your kids like actual human beings and you’re a good way toward being a good parent.
It’s weird, I think my parents did a fine job of raising me and my brother, even though my father was a raging (but functioning) alcoholic and my mother was (is) manic-depressive. They made sure we were taken care of, put us both through expensive college, and have always been there for us whenever we needed anything. But my brother decided long ago (thanks to therapy) that our upbringing was somehow traumatic and he harbors enormous anger and resentment towards our parents (although he keeps this mostly hidden from them). He has consciously chosen to raise his own children basically the opposite of how our parents did, but they have basically turned out exactly like him: socially awkward, depressed and in terrible physical shape. I asked him whether he blames himself for their problems since he blames our parents for his, and it turns out no, he blames our parents for his children’s problems, too.
Everyone has problems. And everyone thinks they are above them and have moved past them. I think it’s more realistic to just love your kids and hope that you do just a little bit better than your parents did. Just like every generation is smarter than the last maybe in time the planet will be less fucked up.
Wow, this is kind of fascinating. If anything it points to nature over nurture, which I would think your brother would find a relief.
You know your situation better than anyone so feel free to ignore this if I’m way off base.
But I’m guessing two things here:
Your parents were able to provide you with things you needed as a child. Perhaps things like college and clothes on your back were the things you needed to grow into a fulfilled and happy person. But maybe your brother needed your mom to control her emotions better during an episode. Maybe he needed your dad to be predictable and consistent when he was instead drinking behaving in ways that were irritating or unpredictable from a child’s perspective.
You might not be fully acknowledging some of the things they did (or didn’t do) that made you feel bad when you were little. It doesn’t have to be physical abuse for it to have an impact on you. We know now that children form attachment styles at least partially based on how their parents responded to their cries during infancy. Kids can be amazingly resilient, but also incredibly delicate.
Also, the odds that they treated you differently based on birth order, their age when they had each of you, gender, your personalities, etc. is very high.
You should ask your brother what really bothers him deep down. I’ll bet you get some tears and probably some very deep, very impactful memories/feelings about your parents.
If you asked my younger, more relaxed brother about our parents, he would say, “Yeah man dad’s a dick for drinking and bailing on us, and mom likes to guilt trip us but oh well.”
I would be the one to explain how their constant fighting, dad’s drinking/drugging, mom’s emotional manipulation and authoritarian parenting, etc. made me feel deeply unsafe and insecure as a child. I felt bad about myself and my life. I wished I could get a letter from Hogwarts more than anything. And when our father got so into drugs that he became absent completely, I felt lonely and abandoned. Took me many years to make peace with it and realize he was really sick and struggling.
The thing is, I suspect that I’ve actually come a lot further in my healing than my brother has. I don’t think he’s aware of some of the things he does or why he does them. Any chance your brother is actually onto something here?
Yeah, what you say is pretty reasonable. I just know from talking to my brother that he has sort of invented many of the negative things that happened to him in our house growing up. He has a tendency to describe things that actually happened but then to impart motives or thoughts in our parents’ heads and to be angry about these rather than the events - when of course he can’t really know their motives or thoughts.
One example: our father was a professor and when my brother was in graduate school he was giving a lecture and our dad came to watch him. My brother feels that he was there because he was worried that my brother would do a bad job and embarrass him - when in fact my father has never done or said anything to suggest that he would think in that way. I know from talking to my father that he is just straight up very proud that my brother has gone on to be a professor like him.
You’d be surprised how many parents struggle with even basic stuff like “don’t scream at your child all of the time”. It should be easy and common sense, and yet so many fail at this…
man i don’t even understand why they do that, it very obviously doesn’t work and means that when you actually need to shout at the child they’ll ignore it since you always shout at them
oftentimes it’s straight up more effective (though maybe not quite the correct option) to simply ignore them, which i would think is easier than screaming, but what do i know
I think there’s a lot of people that never got to the point of examining whether their emotional impulses are at all effective at driving them towards their immediate goals, let alone their long term ones. And they don’t realize that things don’t just go back to normal after they bully someone into going along with their way.
My parents are great as well. Very supportive and loving.
My parents were top notch but I was a fucking monster and made their lives hell, and I would not have blamed them for beating the fuck out of me.
I too could have used a 'sperg diagnosis, and they probably could have fostered my civil engineering and architectual design traits better, or given me more books on the subject. From as early as I can remember, I was designing and building detailed models of cities from whatever I could get my hands on. Sand, twigs, blocks of wood from dads carpentry business, cotton thread from mums sewing kit for powerlines, etc. I feel like that was a missed opportunity, now that I work in tech. But at least I have Factorio to scratch that itch.